Going to Extremes (HB) - Tapa dura

This text accompanies a four-part TV series in which Nick Middleton spends a month in the world's coldest, hottest, wettest and driest inhabited places. Nick Middleton considers why people settled in these palces, how they manage to live under such difficult conditions, and why on earth they stay. Coldest: Oymyakon in Siberia where the average winter temperature is 47 degrees below zero and the air turns to ice as it hits the air. Hottest: Daloi in Ethiopia where the temperature remains at 94 degrees all year round. Wettest: Mawsynram in India where during the dry season there is a water shortage. Driest: Arica in Chile which has had 14 consecutive years without rain and the only source of water is fog collected in nets stretched across the desert.

Nick Middleton is a geography lecturer at Oxford University, specialising in deserts, and has written four travel books: The Last Disco in Outer Mongolia, Kalashnikovs and Zombie Cucumbers, Travels as a Brussels Scout and Ice Tea and Elvis.